“Forgotten Hollywood”- The CNN Connection…
Manny P. here…
Many of my friends in the entertainment business have very interesting and exciting jobs. One of my oldest and dearest friends is Mary Rogers. We belonged to the college radio station together at UCLA back in the late 1970’s. She always dreamed of being a correspondent for television news.
I remember when she was invited to join CNN. When she worked for the Atlanta affilliate in the mid-1980’s, I visited her while I was on vacation, and she gave me a complete tour of the facilities. What we didn’t realize is that her dream of being in front of a news camera would take a dramatic detour. 
She has been with CNN for three decades, now stationed in the Cairo Bureau… and Mary has become one of their top journalists behind the camera. She has handled many stories in the Middle East looking through a lens. I can’t tell you how many female camera operators there are in news, but I’m quite confident she has become one of the best! And, her four-part blog series in March about her recent travels in Afghanistan with the troops was a well-written piece of journalism. She needs to do more writing for CNN!
Recently, she sent me a few photographs with her as the subject. One was taken in Madagascar; the other in Afghanistan. Mary has given me permission to share these pictures with my readers, so you may see a unique brand of history that ties in with “Hollywood.” According to Ms. Rogers:
I was embedded with a marine unit on the largest NATO operation in Afghanistan since 2001. It was called OPERATION MOSHTARAK. CNN correspondent Atia Abawi and I air assaulted into Marjah, with the ALPHA Company 1-6 USMC. The ALPHA Company was what the marines call “the main effort of the operation.” So, CNN got one of the prime embeds (there were other journalists with other units).
I’m proud of Mary Rogers; and still feel that even though we haven’t seen each other in almost 15 years, she remains one of my best pals. She’ll be in Southern California in August, and we are committed to hanging out so we may catch up on old times. And, I remain a loyal and constant viewer of CNN, the news agency supporting my friend for all these years.
Until next time> “never forget”
This entry was posted on Monday, July 5th, 2010 at 6:44 pm and is filed under Blog by Manny Pacheco. You can follow any comments to this post through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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